Information Technology (IT) companies and departments who support their customers' computer systems are constantly challenged with the need to provide timely and cost-effective support to their customers. Remote support provides the means for IT professionals to remotely access and to control customers' computer systems. This eliminates the need for the IT professionals to travel on-site to fix a problem and the delays in response time.
Within the context of remote support and remote access, the right amount of access and user privilege provided to a representative continues to be a problem. When a remote support representative is tasked to work on a remote system via a remote support session, adequate amount of privilege and rights to that remote system has to be granted in order for the representative to perform the troubleshooting and problem solving tasks. In addition, credentials to critical applications on the remote system have to be provided in order for the representative to gain access to them.
Some conventional approaches require the representative to be provided a set of credentials that grant more privileges than the representative would need for most remote support scenarios. This is due to the need to cover specific support scenarios where this representative would need the elevated privileges and rights or credentials for critical applications. Providing a set of credentials with elevated privileges or credentials which provide access to critical applications to representatives at all times presents security risks to systems of the organizations receiving support.
Based on the foregoing, there is a clear need for approaches that provide remote support and access, while minimizing security risks.